the groundhog day project

"Feeling screwed up at a screwed up time in a screwed up place does not necessarily make you screwed up." - Hard Harry Hard-On No teachers today, again , except as antagonists... Well, I suppose my take was that Joe Clark was the antagonist of the larger story if not the throughline of Lean on Me . And, for so many high schoolers, plenty of teachers are the antagonists. Not just teachers--parents, other adults; like they're all the phonies Holden Caulfield saw them as. The perspective here: this movie puts us on the side of the teenagers. Hard Harry Hard-On (Christian Slater) starts us out with the radio show we will learn is an unlicensed broadcast--that's the basic setup for Pump Up the Volume . Hard Harry Hard-On, of course, is also Mark Hunter, a fairly shy (meek may be a better descriptor) high schooler. Mark's parents grew up in the sixties but have turned establishment--his father is the "youngest school commissioner" in Arizona's history...

The reality behind Lean on Me , the truth in Dead Poets Society , the story of Stand and Deliver --truth and fiction twist together. If we take something meaningful from a film, the reality behind it doesn’t matter so much. Truth comes in the experience. And, truth is subjective. For example, one reviewer on IMDb asks, “What is the theme of this rubbish movie?” Follows that up with: “Those five Black narcissistic individuals do not respect themselves, nor [sic] they respect others and they shamelessly act (swearing, acting like horny sex maniacs and perverts).” Don’t forget the guns and the drugs. I mean, if you’re going to be dismissive in such broadstrokes, go all out. If you’re going to conclude, as that reviewer does, “This was the worst move I have ever seen!” maybe you should put a little more thought into your critique than some reactionary, presumably (but not overtly) racist bullshit. To counter that review, another reviewer on IMDb says, All five members were uncompromi...

Taking a break from seriousness with Summer School . Not that this movie doesn't demonstrate one of the points I've been trying to make--students have reasons beyond their attitudes that get in the way of schoolwork. Or, the usual Hollywood take on teaching, as Shoop (Mark Harmon) just said, "Inside every so-called bad kid is a good kid just waiting for someone to reach on down through the sleaze and the slime, pick him up and hose him off." It's a nice thought, but a teacher's gotta have a really powerful and long reach to get past the personal obstacles--like Rhonda's (Shawnee Smith) pregnancy--economic issues--like Larry's (Ken Olandt) night job--or other outstanding hinderances that have nothing to do with the kid's attitude or, necessarily, the teacher's ability. But, I said this was a break from seriousness. You know what amuses me about this movie lately? I read Roger Ebert's review of the film today and he hated this film. He ca...

Then, there was The Principal . Actually, in movie terms, this movie came before Lean on Me . It's a different beast, perhaps, because it's fiction. Doesn't start with school. Rather begins in a bar. Rick Lattimer (James Belushi) is clearly an angry, violent man. Making that clear right away, as he goes after his wife's divorce lawyer/new boyfriend with a baseball bat. Afterward, cop asks him his occupation. Wait for it--school teacher. We're supposed to be surprised. I'm not sure why we should care (except of course we know already this is a movie about a principal (who could very well also be a teacher). He's also a disgusting bachelor-type. Smells the bad milk, is revolted, puts it back in the fridge, for example. (Box office aside: I saw this movie at The Academy, a second-run theater in Pasadena, so I'm not sure when I saw it. But, looking at the weekend it came out, I like that I saw all of the top 12 ( The Principal was #4), but only about ...

(I'm not done with Joe Clark.) "...any school must deal with the student as they receive them, no more and no less" (Clere, 2015, April 1). An interesting line from an article at ethosreview.org , this past April, that is partly about Lean on Me and partly about recent North Carolina policy that grades schools based on standardized test scores (not a novel idea, certainly). And, I both agree and disagree with the sentiment. On the one hand, yeah, a student comes to school with certain values and beliefs instilled in the home (or from the places outside the home where they spend time). A student is limited by his or her socioeconomic conditions. All students are not created equal. Case in point: Kaneesha (Karen Malina White) was a student at School 6 where Joe Clark (Morgan Freeman) was previously principal, she seems set up in the film as one of the good students. Yet, at the end of the movie, she's the one who has gotten pregnant. Children make stupid decisions...

Naught but a few seconds into Lean on Me and I had to pause the movie and do some factchecking. I already knew there were some factual problems with this "true story"--and I'll get to some of those below--but right away, the opening text crawl quotes an "official report" that called Eastside High a "cauldron of violence." I was curious what kind of "official" report said this. According to a piece at northjersey.com , 22 October 2009, it was a county prosecutor in the 1970s who dubbed Eastside a "cauldron of violence." A prosecutor. So the evidence here in the crawl that Eastside is bad--and trust me, the movie is going to offer up some more evidence as soon as the crawl gets done--is a man or woman... I tried to check who specifically said it and found a New York Times piece that says it was Joe Clark. I.E. the protagonist of this film. Not a prosecutor. So, 1) if it was a prosecutor, then it was a man or woman who was legally r...